Television Pick: Two for the Road

This week, Emily Nussbaum writes about “Game of Thrones,” the HBO series that she notes “is the latest entry in television’s most esteemed category: the sophisticated cable drama about a patriarchal subculture. This phenomenon launched with “The Sopranos,” but it now includes shows such as “Deadwood,” “Mad Men,” “Downton Abbey,” and “Big Love”…. And yet the undergirding strength of each series is its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a ‘half man.’” She concludes, “If the show has a hero, it’s Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), who is capable of cruelty but also possesses insight and empathy, concealed beneath a carapace of Wildean wit.” Watch a supercut that reimagines “Game of Thrones” as a bromantic comedy, co-starring Tyrion and a mercenary soldier named Bronn.

Illustration by Vasili Zorin.

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